Telehealth Case Study

1. What are your current thoughts about telehealth?

Telehealth is the provision of Healthcare services through diverse technological methods from a distance (Hill & Miller, 2012). Clinicians can converse with patients through a myriad of options such as videoconferencing and email.

I think Telehealth has made healthcare convenient and accessible to both medical physicians and patients. Telehealth allows medical physicians to check in on their patients regularly, and find out how they are coping with new treatment plans that had been previously prescribed. Patients are able to receive medical advice about their symptoms in the comfort of their own home and need not cue and wait long hours in the hospital waiting rooms. For example, physicians can show patients how to perform certain movements, such as stretches, to alleviate pain through the face-to-face option of videoconferencing. This especially benefits patients who are not so mobile and cannot be physically present at the clinic, overseas patients or those who feel uncomfortable being in public. In addition, patients with rare or severe conditions have the option of obtaining a second opinion from specialists, who work in another country, about treatment plans. Thirdly, patients who would only like to clarify some doubts would be able to email the their primary physician directly instead of making an appointment. Hence, Telehealth allows patients to consult their medical physician from any location via videoconferencing applications like Skype or through email thus making healthcare very convenient and accessible.

However, I think that telehealth would not be so effective as patients may not be able to trust the doctor and diagnosing their symptoms may be inaccurate. Firs...

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... checks his email infrequently, the practice reminders sent through emails were not effective. Thus the process of him practicing and remembering the pose by committing it to muscle memory was lengthened.

4. What have you learnt from this process?

I learnt that Telehealth is just a big umbrella of possibilities in the healthcare industry that provides care for incurable but controllable diseases, people residing in rural areas and services in a particular class of diseases (Chatterjee, Maheshwari, & Tulu, 2007). I learnt that face-to-face communication is taken for granted. Without communicating face-to-face, there is a tendency for miscommunication to arise. Secondly, learning to convey a message that is detailed but yet easy to understand was extremely useful. I became more aware to break down information into bite-sized pieces when communicating with others.